


Scary, Scary World

by Strigoi17



Category: Steam Powered Giraffe
Genre: crystal pepsi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-30
Updated: 2012-12-30
Packaged: 2017-11-23 01:01:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/616329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Strigoi17/pseuds/Strigoi17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>based on the headcanon that the jon went through incredible pain when he started running on crystal pepsi. this is centered around the spine and rabbit taking care of him. i also incorporated various other headcanons, including a few of my own! c:</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scary, Scary World

He was dying.

Pain was tunneling through his circuitry, emphatic and razor-sharp. His eyes clouded over, electric blue splotched by murky oil; it slipped down his cheeks in filmy streaks, collected in the wood panels beneath his head. The koi in his chest was restless as he twitched; steam was white-hot as it crawled through his chest, kicked against his hypersensitive chassis; every brass joint ached and panged in time with the bubbling inside of him.

He was dying, he knew he was dying, that’s exactly what this had to be, he knew there was nothing else that could be happening, he knew it he knew it he KNEW it—

“…Jon?”

It was Rabbit that found him, kneeling beside his bed and peering below it. The Jon was shuddering, knees bent up to his chest and back pressed against the farthest wall. In the shadows beneath the bed, his ocular receptors glared blue. Rabbit’s arm groaned when he yanked up the sheets, making Jon startle. Jumping violently, he banged his head against the bottom of the bed frame. Shrill and pathetic, a wail ballooned up from his chest from the abrupt additional pain; he jerked away, only succeeding in tangling his curls in the wire bed frame.

“Shhh, shh, buddy, st-st-stop struggling!” Despite the anxious contortion of his brow, Rabbit immediately flattened out on his chest, reached out a hand and swatted gently at Jon. The movement stunned the younger robot long enough for Rabbit to seize him around his middle and yank him out from under the bed.

As soon as he was touched, The Jon erupted in a warbling shriek of agony.

“RABBIT!” He barked, body immediately locking up as his older brother pressed him against his chest. Pain splintered through his arms and legs, and he was sure his plates were cracking. “RABBIT STOP TOUCHING ME!”

A flurried pounding of boot heels swelled from the hallway, a cloud of noise that closed in around Jon like bodies. Another drawn-out cry spilled out from within him, only rising in pitch and volume as The Spine’s hands wrapped around him.

“Jon,” His brother’s voice wrapped around The Jon, cradled him and, despite the pain, soothed the panic vibrating through him. “Jon, you better stop crying right this second.”

Gradually, the screaming simmered down, slipped into a low whimpering. A thousand needles stabbed into him, fissured his plates, dug deeper every time he moved.

“Now,” he prompted once Jon had calmed down. “Tell me why we haven’t seen you in two days.”

It took him exactly six minutes to stutter out a decent answer: he couldn’t get his mouth to work right. “I-I-It h-hhhurts.”

Immediately, The Spine’s face darkened. One day, people would start listening to him, and none of them would ever go through something as idiotic as this — converting steam-powered machines to carbonated vapor, replacing oil with Crystal Pepsi. The Spine was shaking, vibrating with a mix of anger, fear and outright helplessness.

“It f-f-f-feels like there’s something — something WRONG!”

Spine tightened his arms around him, fingers gripping at his shoulder and the curve of his knee. With an effortless upward swing, he stood, his brother in tow. With a near-hysterical yelp, The Jon turned into his brother’s chest, pressing his nose and cheek against the hard, heated metal of The Spine’s chest.

 

By the time Jon was calmed down, Spine had settled him into a bedroom closer to the Hall of Wires. Both of them were slipped beneath the covers, Jon latched onto The Spine stubbornly, even as he squeaked and mumbled in discomfort. Spine was curled around him, detangling his curls with titanium fingers as Jon’s eyes flickered and dimmed. As he calmed, slipped into a power down, his mouth hung slightly open, half-spoken words trickling into the space between them.

“I… Sp…”

Carried on the manor’s WiFi, his words solidified in Spine’s mind: gentle apologies and thank yous; growing quiet even as they were spoken directly into his ears. He always kept trying to hold a conversation and stay awake, but it never really worked: his system was exhausted, and despite his best efforts, needed to adjust in peace. It was never going to be helped, apparently — The Jon fussed just like a toddler. Maybe it was in his programming.

“Come on,” Spine grinned. “How can you be sad with a face like this keeping you company?”

The laugh that creaks out is painful; he can see it in the way his mouth hangs afterward.

Beneath his bravado, calm words and run-away Older Brother complex, The Spine was worried. There was a helpless nausea pooling in his chest, an ache coagulating in his back, that made his own eyebrows furrow. Cradled in the crook of his elbow, The Jon was small — delicate and hapless. He leaned closer to his brother, combing a hand through partially tamed curls. One finger slipped down, rubbed a smudge off of the bridge of his nose. In this moment, he was useless, inhuman, a hideous excuse of an older brother.

It was something that he’s only ever done once before. Rabbit’s circuits malfunctioned, and he refused to power down; he was up twitching for nights, at points screaming gibberish and at others stuttering too hard to speak. He was a mess of short-circuits and inadequate past repairs, and wouldn’t let anyone come near him except for Spine or Jon. Until The Spine had, on a whim, started humming to the technically older robot, he hadn’t been able to even fall into a power-save mode.

His voice was creaky, muffled by darkness and silence; but when he sang, it caught Jon’s attention. “I’m safe right heeere…”

Jon puffed out a sweet-smelling sigh, shifting to scoot closer to his brother. He gave a meek whimper, but stopped when The Spine’s fingers sifted through his hair. “It’s kind of scary, thinking of what’s ooout there…”

There was something about being inhuman, something in the creaking of metal limbs and the bounce of his step that chilled The Spine to his chassis. It was a wet, sticky sensation that gooped across his plates, suffocated him under the density and heat of it.

Jon’s half-hearted words stalled, evaporated under the weight of the other robot’s singing. In moments, he was asleep, signaled by a sudden limpness and a dull creaking.

 

Somewhere in the mess, The Spine must have fallen asleep himself: the next morning, he was roused by Jon’s whimpers and a loud, immediately recognizable voice.

“Come on!” His voice rose in pitch, “Hi, The Jon! I’m Jerry The Sock Puppet! Smile for me, Jon!”

It took him a moment to power on completely, after being shut off for hours. His ocular receptors switched on gradually, flaring to life and battling the sunlight. Squinting, he sat up to see, sure enough, Rabbit wearing one of Jon’s Sock Puppets.

The Spine’s heart leaps when he realizes that, despite his awkward, pained posture, Jon’s smiling.

“I haven’t seen you in a while, Jerry,” Spine remarks, sitting up fully. For the first time, he looks at the puppet; in truth, he HADN’T seen it in years. It was a dull green, stained with oil and a patch of black fabric Jon had darned himself.

“I’ve missed you, Spine!” Rabbit waves Jerry’s mouth wildly, totally out of sync. “I only had The Jon for company, and that was reeeeally booooring.”

“Hey!” Jon cries, glaring at his older brother. “Rabbit, if I wasn’t hurting real bad, I’d punch you in the face.”

“Punch me in the face?” He yells, loud enough to make The Spine flinch. “Why would you punch me in the face!”

“Because you’re not funny.”

Rabbit’s face droops, but before he can retort, a knock sounds halfway across the manor.

“I wonder, who in the world is —?”

“Oh!” Rabbit jumps up, quick and violent enough to send Jon skittering sideways to bang into Spine. Immediately, a wail ripples up, and The Spine wraps himself again around his brother to quiet him. Rabbit, however, keeps talking, barely noticing Jon’s discomfort.

“That must be Michael!”

“You called Michael?” Spine calls, incredulous, as Rabbit skates into the hall.

He skids to a stop, peers back into the room. “Yeah? Why not? Jon’s sick!”

Again, Spine stalls. Rabbit was, overall, not against Michael himself, but against the repairs Spine always called him in for. “You NEVER call Michael.”

“…So? Jon’s HURT.”

 

Michael knows, after working with the robots for years, that the best way to get Jon to stop squirming is to distract him. Surprisingly still, Jon lays on his back, chest creaked open to allow access to Michael’s hands.

“So, my friend’s thinking of taking up birdwatching.” He chitters; Jon’s eyes light up immediately.

“There’s a book and everything — I didn’t think people got that serious with stuff like that!”

“Birds are great!” Jon cries back. “They’re so beautiful, and musical…”

Laughing, Michael nods. “Yeah, I know! But I guess I never really… got interested in them, like you two have.”

“Birds don’t even care if I’m naked!”

“…What?”

 

“Rabbit,” Spine’s voice was tired, lower than usual. “Rabbit, why didn’t you tell me?”

“Well i-i-it’s not a ba-ba-big deal!”

With a dipped brow and folded arms, he repeats his name. “Rabbit, darn it, you need to tell us when this kind of thing happens!”

When Rabbit had lead Michael up to the bedroom, he had yanked Spine right out of it. Neither Jon nor Michael noticed Rabbit’s fervid motions, or the wrought-copper grip he had on Spine’s elbow.

“I don’t KN-KNOW if it’s my emotional receptors!” He now argued back. “I could just — just be scared for The Jon!”

“Shhh!” He stops him, brings a finger up to quiet him. “If Michael hears, he’s going to be all over you — you’re right, he needs to finish Jon first. But you ARE getting checked out, Rabbit.”

“Why?” He huffed, placing his hands on his hips. “Wh-wha-why? I’m just a little ANTSY—”

“Robots don’t get anxiety.” Spine stood straight. “Your emotion board’s messed up, Rabbit. You need to be checked out, at the very least.”

For a moment, Rabbit thought it over; The Spine could see him chewing his words over in his mind, eyes turning down to stare at his shoes. “…I’m older.”

Spine’s entire body deflates. “Rabbit.”

“I don’t have to listen to you!!” He turns on his heel, hands still on his hips as they swivel in Spine’s direction.

“I have no problems in tackling you right to the ground,” He warns. “Because Michael’s going to repair you afterwards, anyway. It’ll just hurt a lot more for you.”

“Oh yeah?!” Rabbit spins around, hands up and balled into fists. “Try me, The Spine!”

Spine’s hands come up in defense, and he punches the air twice. “Oh, I will try you just fine!”

Neither of them realized that they were yelling until Michael popped his head out of the bedroom, staring incredulously at the two. “What are you DOING?”

“Is The Jon okay?” They both asked simultaneously, hands dropping back to their sides.

“Yeah,” He nodded, stepping out fully. “Yeah, I can’t do anything to help the pain… but there’s nothing wrong. He just needs to adjust.”

“Great!” Spine stands, motions tipping his hat to the human. “Now you can check out Rabbit!”

“UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH.”


End file.
